Art: Bridge from Antiquity

The Egyptian civilization that was greater, for nearly two thousand
years, than anything before it, was almost spent by the first
millennium B.C. The empire was shattered. The legacy of cultural
greatness from the days of Ramses II was running out. Egypt was slowly
overcome by an ennui that made her powerless to stop the conquering
hordes of Libyans, Ethiopians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans,
who swept into the Nile Valley like a rampaging flood. But foreign
domination for a time pumped new vigor into Egypt's tired blood.
Sculptors gradually began to escape from the sterility of pyramid
sculpture and, subjected...